Large speaking cast but it helpfully concentrates only on a few predominately.

It likely is because I enjoyed Life on Mars, but Angel Beats!, in spite of an initial shaky start, really did pull through into being a very enjoyable 13-episode anime series.

The series ramps up from an initially shaky premise of “A high school afterlife” (oh how wrong that could have gone) to a much more enjoyable questioning of regret and lives cut short for young people; that’s explained pretty early on, taking the opposite approach to Life on Mars which never makes a reveal on the nature of the world. The characters helpfully don’t do much in the dark; you get to see them propose theories and do just the right amount of internal monologue rather then having to guess it all.

It’s rather heartwarming too; if anything this has the largest amount of sympathetic characters in almost any series I’ve seen and an actually likeable smart protagonist. The short series helps this; any longer, and I’d have expected a bit more behind peoples personalities to be revealed. One or two of them was just a bit cross wired so I wonder what other ideas they’d have come up with here. In fact if they had cut some of the plots, it’d not have suffered at all; they make good use of taking over the credits at several points, making for more enjoyable lengthy episodes. The music numbers are pop/rock background tracks and don’t take over the series, which is a nice way of doing it.

TK: For some reason his off-beat English comments are the funniest thing in it.

There is comedy in the mix too, which I’ve not even mentioned yet; odd for a series which on the face of it appears to be a highschool action/comedy not to mention it first perhaps? The comedy is predictably based around silly comments and over the top stunts/action, sadly sometimes at the most inappropriate times (luckily they stave off doing it in the more important parts). Given two episodes are basically a massive collection of silly deaths, it is a relief how it gets can get serious while still being quite lighthearted – the past might be bad, put the present afterlife world is full of possibility after all. Humour wise though one stand out point for the English listener though is a character called TK, who just interjects in the strangest pronunciation English phrases out of the blue; this was something I did actually chuckle at

It also has some things that hang in your mind at the end poking you that it doesn’t quite make so much sense (not to list any one specific one but you do question the given world quite a bit and some of the plots are odd) but in any case; push these things aside since you can’t take it too seriously. A shame however it isn’t perhaps questioned more; frequently God, the purpose of the world and how it works, reincarnation and past people who were in the world are brought up or pointed to but never gone into much detail.

It is though fully of sentimentality and like I said, is very heartwarming! I’d watch this if you’d enjoy a rather interesting story with a nice set of characters (even if you don’t remember all their names), set against a rather barmy set of plots which luckily mainly serve to further the characters interacting – go with the flow and you’d be well rewarded overall with a satisfactory end to what amounts to a well told short story.

Red Faction: Guerrilla. In a sentence; you’re a Space Asshole with a big hammer. I’ve seen it referenced recently as Red Faction: Gorilla which is utterly apt description of the game. I also appear to have a spare copy of the game from owning Metro 2033, hehe

Boom! Kapow! BOOM!

A few seconds later…

BOOOOOOM! CRASH!

It’s a sandboxy game set on Mars (thus almost a literal sandbox! ho ho!). You’re basically a person thrown into a rebellion where your job is to blow everything up of importance in a world. You’ve got no reason for doing this whatsoever, unless the opening cutscene really persuaded you that fighting in a rebellion against a huge army good idea. The game is pretty bare faced about it: You blow things up and then blow more things up.

Short-lived brothers can't be killed until the second cutscene silly!

It does this pretty well; play it in a lighthearted way and you’ll enjoy some of it, the bits involving explosions at least. Generally though it is pretty subpar. The third person combat is boring, pretty dumb, and pretty overall hopeless to enjoy (add up poor allied and enemy AI, limited ammo and weapons and no real cover system into the mess). Blowing up buildings people are in or dropping buildings on them are much more fun. Getting killed because there are a dozen enemies out of reach of your explosive grenades is not as fun; because hell, if I’m in demolitions, why can’t I blow them up? Who says I need to use a gun?! Being able to blow up the vehicles at least proves to be an effective countermeasure to them coming in massive waves.

You also get a hammer; one of the more satisfactory melee weapons I’ve used in a game, since you can destroy buildings (slowly) with it; but sadly the enemies all come armed with guns. How is that fair?!

What else?

Look, look, equality! A sole female NPC! She upgrades weapons and needs rescuing in a very early mission (no joke).

I’ve almost run out of things to say about this, which isn’t good. I’ve not finished it; I might sometime, but it’ll take some effort such as deleting all other games from my PC first. I’m being a little tough – but really this is a very basic game, but I got it cheap so can’t complain since the building destructions are just fun to do. Explosions are exciting, especially when you can place them all down yourself

This is a defiantly anti-AAA title; real lack of breadth since there is one thing to do but it does it really well and is utterly polished to gem like status. Almost a tech demo of blowing buildings up with structural damage; there’s no way you can take seriously your in-game job of blowing up “key structures” for the rebellion, but just revel in the fact you can blow lots of things up in very imaginative ways.

It is a passable excuse to have something to play in between games; but don’t go out expecting anything amazing. Gone are the days of Geo-mod which is something I’d welcome the return of, buildings might be fun but blowing up cliffs, the ground, whatever would be massively fun; imagine having water flooding, or lava, or collapsing terrain, or tunnelling beneath the world…

The in game codex fails to give any useful information on generic enemies.

Gone are linear levels and boss fights. In is the rather empty almost literal sandbox. In are the mindless swarm of stupid allied and enemy NPC’s. In is a plot and set of characters you simply can’t care much about; they pretty much shout at you to get on with the plot, even the protagonist doesn’t seem to care about it, something that I shared with him!

Did I mention you can blow things up a lot in this game? It seems to be worth mentioning again in case you missed it.

To Sum Up

You’re thrown in there to do what you do best no questions asked; blow things up.

You do this for no logical reason except you can.

You go blow everything up.

Right up.

Often into the air.

Often on top of people.

Often allies stupid enough to stand in buildings you need to blow up.

Thus becoming the utter Space Asshole that is totally unavoidable as far as I can see.

I irregularly listen to the Giantbomb Bombcast. They’re now doing membership ($50/year, or monthly $4.95, woo…). Hmm. Just: No thanks, while the irrelevant ramblings and absolutely off-beat podcast length might be unjustifiable as a cost, why make it that long in the first place? They even mention it during this 45 minute long one; they say they like it but it takes lots of time (and so money! “money going out the door”; “what do we get out of that? it’s a hard thing to quantify and a hard thing to monetize”, and going on into adverts on podcasts)…so…hmm, not shorter then; quantity over quality after all.

Instead they split it up into two separate hours. Justification? Other Whiskey Media sites don’t do such a long podcast. This weird split is done so free users get the first hour on time, but the second hour later. Kind of splits it up badly, but there we go.

Oh well, their choice. I guess we’ll see if it works for them. One reservation about this is that Giant Bomb would be pulled directly in two ways; from the people paying subscriptions and advertisers. I hope they’ll keep their quality up, hopefully it won’t slip – if I pay for a site I’d be expecting a level of service that I otherwise wouldn’t expect from free sites. Sadly I don’t expect that level of paid quality from Giant Bomb so can’t justify paying for it but maybe they’ll prove me wrong: they’ll have to do it that way around first however.

With Idle Thumbs now gone I’ve now got very limited good game podcasts to listen to. I’ll be giving Yet Another Gaming Show a chance, but what others are worth the time? Anyone got any? I guess I’ll try looking around the major sites to see who does a reasonable one.

They do fun browser-based diversions – text-based choice games, which have fun stat-changing decisions and chapters. You can be a roaring Dragon or take part in a Hornblower-esk Navy adventure.

I never really seriously read “Choose your own adventure” books – I did have some but always cheated just to check out how the books worked, which was much more fun. Drawing out maps, getting through the game, was the fun part.

These however are fun and entertaining in their own right – and quite intelligently done. You get several chapters, several vignettes (they explain how to write your own, the blog is great at explaining the choices behind their games (including on genders). Also; nice theme 😉 ), which all press you into deciding some major action or other. It’s done so well and gives you a lot of agency – as they explain in their “Why” section.

I’ve not replayed any however; mainly because I’ve been fully satisfied with my own mini-adventure, being a Dragon or a member of the Royal Navy! I expect the choices you do make can be, as in most games, variable between a small change in text and a entirely different branch (and perhaps early end to the story). The interestingly devised stats change outcomes, and it does a great job at making it book-like without taking away your own agency – the actions are widely different a lot of the time.

In any case; these are easier then text-based adventures to navigate, fun to leap into and enjoy, and also are well written. Give them a shot if you’ve got half an hour or so to spare

I’ve finally got around to editing and uploading my AiGameDev 2010 conference notes. I’m still working on photos, we’ll see if I can be bothered to post any – since Alex did a great job posting some himself I don’t know though.

Paris itself was also excellent, with the very cool Micah who I shared a room with – and if you need additional AI notes, contact him I managed to do some good walking (and I definitely should get some of those photos sorted!). I listened to some Parisian Jazz, saw various sights and enjoyed a bit of the music festival on Monday evening. I’ve still got things to do there, so likely I’ll try and get to next years conference too.

(Yes, I’ve been back from Paris for a while, I’ll post my notes from the AI conference shortly…)

In the mean time I’ve also been reading recently Mystery Man on Film. I’m no film buff (I’ve got a lot of good films to see still! still rooted in games myself), but it is great to read about the creative process and what works and doesn’t work in film, which is applicable to other linear things – animation, TV series etc.

The “Art of…” collections are great (written not just by the elusive blog writer, who moved to his own site by the way for slightly newer things). It is great to see some things brought up as good I never appreciated quite as much such as really good verbal exposition – although of course I know some greats there were some nice surprises.

Also is the great way some “rules” are entirely deconstructed, and is something game critics and anyone being creative can take away. I certainly liked Charlie Kaufman‘s views on it in an interview on the Synecdoche, New York DVD. He pretty much explained that there were no rules or they all could be broken, and he had only “vaguely heard of the 3 act play” – it sums up perhaps why there is the fact you only need one exception to break any silly rule, and those exceptions can be plentiful.

If you are interested at some of the screenwriting and other things that are done in films and why (and a lot of criticism to boot! something that isn’t exactly widely forthcoming in games), it’s well worth a read. I highly recommend it, but it is a big time sink too – too engrossing by half!

In relation to games (why not?) the figuring of a lot of things in film can be applicable for the protagonist-based games – not that they should be films however – there is a still growing vocabulary and set of best-practices (let’s not use “rules”!) where games still both fall flat by ignoring films, or worse, emulating them too much. I think I can look at some of this a bit more in the future – got a lot of good games to play (or finish playing), and even the bad examples at least show you what not to do.

This is just a brief thing; I’m trying to gauge the point of this here article. I mainly skim or don’t read The Escapist anymore so I have no idea if this is basically the standard for the weekly content the site was originally built on, but well, I’m still trying to think of the point.

The point appears to be a nostalgic reminiscence with a few bits of historical information thrown in. It is a article which is fine if you want a very basic bit of knowledge about what Dragon’s Lair is but that is it. Sadly, when it comes to historical articles, I am usually disappointed. In this case it is easy to point out some reasons why. It doesn’t make it a terrible article, just one without much of a point.

Framing the Game Against Nothing

Going with any kind of press release is infuriating in history, since they are always overblown and bad. So the first bit of the article simply regurgitates horrible marketing, fair enough.

However we never get a frame against what other things were out at the time. Even some rudimentary research into the actual games, and not a vague reference, as in this case of “Conventional games of the era were sprite-based, representing movement through a series of bitmaps displayed in succession”.

Then, later we get comparisons to contemporary games as if they were inspired solely by Dragon’s Lair. It might well have influenced quick time event games in general from that point onwards, but a lot more came out after Dragon’s Lair (and plenty of games basically were QTE games before it); especially which were not animated and a lot more “typical” QTE games on consoles and PC’s. The genre itself entirely failed since they were all so reallyreallybad. Almost all FMV games were QTE based. Sigh.

The fact these are not even mentioned is bemusing, apparently the entire QTE industry just died soon after Dragon’s Lair (even though it was soooooo good!). Very selective revisionist history!

Leaving out Important Information

For some bizarre reason when expounding the love for the game, it is glossed over just how much the game cost to play; “during a time when a quarter got you a bus ticket, two seats at a movie and a hamburg steak, if my grandpappy’s stories are to be believed” – wha? What? That’s your accuracy?

Then we go onto why the games failed; perhaps the fact laserdisc machines broke easily and were expensive to do games for (and they worked in very specific technologically-limiting ways). Doing hand animation must have exacerbated these costs massively; the amount you can make from one expensive, if novel, game is limited. Perhaps the money train had gone, and it was a fad, but where are the stats to back this up? Perhaps it was there were just actually too few of them and they were too short so even a die hard fan could only spend so much? Do home consoles not factor into their decline either? Sure you’ve got the American 1983 crash (which might well have helped Dragon’s Lair), and afterwards a larger and larger increase in power; meaning proper home ports were available of the once-50cent-per-play game.

The main company Cinematronics was also acquired in the 1980’s so isn’t a vast change in management also an issue? Is Bluth and Dyer leaving an issue or not? Who knows why they left…the author sure doesn’t, and doesn’t cite anything of course, it’s pretty much speculation.

Creators Relation to Other Games

What else did Bluth and Dyer do after Space Ace? Apparently nothing? I don’t get how you can centre so fanatically on them, especially Bluth, without a followup besides “He’s got his own animation company” and “he saw the future” (yet it wasn’t to be! sarcastic sad face here.). I mean, for goodness sakes, his artwork is also in the sequel (also unmentioned) called Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp!

It’s a shame since we also don’t know what Dyer even did before this game, which at least we got for Bluth. Space can’t be an issue (see “Questions”), especially also since I’ve seen articles much longer on The Escapist.

Platform Adaptations

“To date, Dragon’s Lair has been released 59 separate times across over 30 platforms” – please, at least qualify it properly that until major amounts of space were available, the actual gameplay in most of the 59 titles was no where near the original thus are name-tie-ins only, almost akin to “Videogames of the Film” – being platfomers, adventure games and, haha, not even having quick time events in them as such! That’s just lazy.

It is also odd since no connection is made even here between the availability of the game in it’s original form more-or-less and the rise of FMV games at the same time. It’s even funny to see him mention BluRay and DVD releases too.

Questions!

Who doesn’t like questions? Do you not like unanswered questions? Do you think questions are a cheap cop-out for actually putting some worthwhile words on paper? Do we agree that I’m using too many sentences to make this point?

Well, perhaps not:

“are games defined by form, or by content? Do you turn to games for stories or beautiful graphics? Or are you content with the bare bones of gaming – the stuff Bluth would contemptuously describe in Digital Leisure’s interviews as “little sticks and dots”? What ultimately do we desire from our videogames – control, or the illusion of control? Put simply – how much game do you want in your game?”

Gee, thanks for naming all that stuff, but not actually bothering to do anything with it. Most are pretty rubbish polarising questions with no answer (“Do you turn to games for stories or beautiful graphics?” doesn’t have to be one or the other!), the others are rhetorical at best such as “how much game do you want in your game?”.

Finally…Nostalgia!

Even after this deluge of questions Brendan basically carries on the nostalgia – even after hinting it is a “mongrel movie rather than game proper” nothing is questioned as to why it even was made this way. Nostalgia rules over the fact that even if these were the best looking games at the time the amount of effort to make them was astronomical and economically unfeasible (after all; the market is there for new or long lasting things, not playing Dragon’s Lair repeatedly especially at the cost it was – it simply wasn’t really a full game).

Perspective is everything and the article basically has none. It tries to make it up as a precursor to Metal Gear Solid 4 or Heavy Rain, yet makes no actual attempt to describe why such techniques are still used since they plainly didn’t work for Dragon’s Lair even after saying how often it fell flat on its face! He actually comments a little more in the comments about how the game was basically a way to get a short film out to people in Bluth’s own words – this is an area that could have used better examination, and contrast it versus todays games (or even the later FMV titles).

It is, admittedly, at least showed how a “game” which so little input obviously wasn’t long lasting. It perhaps is a testimonial to how you can make short term profit over anything else by making something look so ridiculously pretty. Perhaps too it led to the long deluge of bad QTE based games, or inspired ones that use QTE’s to never use them like Dragon’s Lair. It is worth a better, fairer article then it got here, since it had some influence at least in the art department, something that isn’t actually raised at all how the traditional artwork still isn’t used today much. There are many other points I could bring out but these ones apply well to many other historical articles I’ve seen. I’ll be on the lookout…and really should write some of my own or research games more.

Inspired by Nice Video – Shame About the Song, there are a ton of things which simply have one brilliant gem embedded in them, but the rest of it is just a shame. It basically means a middling film, game or book.

Hancock personifies this for me (at least recently). The film itself starts really well; a flying brick superhero; but one who doesn’t care and simply is an asshole who gets drunk and breaks things. Why is he like this? Why doesn’t he care? Where did he come from? Why are there no others like this? Lots of somewhat interesting questions!

It then leaps to trying to get him to improve after randomly meeting a PR person; The PR angle alone is actually quite fun; him going to prison was pulled off okay; the bank scene was fun and also made sense in a “superman can’t be killed but hostages can be” way, give or take the issue with a bank robber thinking he’d get away somehow.

You then learn his past a bit (amnesia, no one coming for him) then it really goes to pants – I’ll just ignore the rest here – the whole “duo demigods” (with silly fights)/”plot device of him being vulnerable” (with silly conclusion) and so forth. His past could have always been unexplained too; a real John Doe superhero, and just focus on the present. Shame it just went to pants exactly when the woman throws Hancock through the wall – like Hancock I was like “waaaa?” for all the wrong reasons (not just because she can’t act).

The gem is having a rather real anti-superhero (a non-caring one, not just one who kills bad guys) and actually pulling it off quite well in the beginning. It could have been an interesting dissection of why someone who is invincible wants to help people (and in fact it is never reached in the film the reason why he does help people apart from it possibly being rewarding in unto itself!), especially when he has no past and possibly might not even be human.

In fact how he even came to be actually absolutely terrible but at least trying to help is never really covered – he could have just as surely just bummed around doing next to nothing but stealing liquor for the rest of his life! Seeing his past would have been an interesting way to take the film – flashback or just actually seeing him start out trying but failing and just being terrible at it. After all you have to wonder after 80 years what happened? How long has he been trying? and so forth. It’s quite Disney overall despite implied violence; no moral questions about not saving anyone one day because he was hung over, or if in fact he had issues doing everything right so turned to drink or whatever. I mean, it is quite comically both serious (in a way; with hostages, C4 and so forth) yet just not serious at all (silly demigod fights and over-the-top fights in general, silly badguys, redemption-in-a-week montage, no actual questions asked about morals and fuzzy silly PR, etc.).

Anyway, enough rambling words on Hancock. I hope some future films look into the more meta-side of superheroes. I’d certainly find it entertaining

I’ve not played much of the Battlefield series, but it has a grand legacy of small-to-medium-scale tanks and troop battles. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has a passable basically rail-shooter singleplayer, but gorgeous first-person-shooter squad-based multiplayer.

Still Haven’t Finished the Singleplayer…

The B Team, the guys you really don't want to call...

Thankfully it definitely doesn’t take itself too seriously, since the singleplayer game I’ve still not had the sheer will to complete yet. It is both ridiculously easy and patience-testing boring – however becomes hard when you’re thrown into fighting large amounts of enemies since you simply can’t shoot them all. This comes from them being relatively easy to kill (they barely take cover or move), but you too are easy to kill (you can only crouch and a few good shots – or missles – can kill you).

Not having to prone and peek around corners is a bit refreshing but I do miss it from Call of Duty 4 and STALKER. Still, crouching and having simpler controls means it is fast paced until it gets more annoying with enemy troops spawning in huge numbers.

Curse you Inevitable Betrayal!

In any case, it’s passable if boring. The characters are sterotypical and macho as per usual, and the plot is random and doesn’t make much sense but at least it gives you a good feel for how the game plays.

Okay, actually I finished it…just…

Since I was taking my sweet time getting screenshots I went ahead and finished the singleplayer, which took a matter of an hour or so in any case. Not much to report apart from a few screenshots! I mean, some really silly things; “brilliant” writing and sequel fodder.

What Brilliant Writing

Ace Rimmer POV

End shot from the singleplayer AKA "Sequel Fodder"

Multiplayer! But where is my kit…

Testing my Eyefinity setup with Very Ultra Widescreen

Leaping into multiplayer is both a great and a sad thing from the outset. I did it only a few levels into the singleplayer and came off none-the-worse since I’m a competent FPS player. This is good since there are no tutorials and also everything apart from your first weapon and a grenade is an unlock!

This meant as a medic I couldn’t heal anyone, as an engineer I couldn’t fix vehicle damage, and as a soldier I couldn’t provide ammo. Luckily a sniper just needs to snipe, so his default kit is the fairest (apart from he gets his ability to place a motion sensitive item as an unlock, but at least that isn’t heavily needed for combat).

I’ve got major issues with this kind of treatment. I am competent enough to learn the maps and have fun while ultimately suffering a massive amount of deaths to mortars, guided missiles, super-explosive grenades, high powered shotguns…just to name a few. It takes a fair few hours to make the basic class unlocks, which is a real shame and I’m putting it down as by far the worst aspect of the multiplayer right now!

Multiplayer Joy!

Multiplayer shot

The rest is a joy however; it is fast paced, seemingly balanced gameplay with a lot of tactical combat options available. Usefully all the classes weapons can actually kill things, meaning cover and covering fire is useful – I’m so glad the medic doesn’t get a pokey gun! Aiming is a proper skill to get heavy fire on someone since headshots kill faster, and like the singleplayer there is no prone or corner-looking meaning you do get a decent shot back at someone who shoots at you.

You can also join a squad with up to 3 others that allows you to spawn next to them when you die (which when you do not have basic equipment is a godsend). Your squad can be given basic orders (as in what objective to take first), but more importantly you can point out enemies to your entire team by pressing Q. How useful! No more mini-map scouring for red dots, and enemies (especially vehicles) can be pointed out so others can shoot them or know where they are in their view.

Multiplayer in a tank of some kind

The maps are also very fun to play in. You can blow up a great amount of cover and buildings, which is fun and strategic, especially for attacking a well defended position. I enjoy the Rush mode, where an attacking team has a limited time to destroy around 6-8 points (by planting a bomb there or simply throwing all your firepower at it for ages), 2 at a time, making the maps a manageable size. It never seems impossible to defend or attack either, and it swaps the teams over so both sides can play as defence or attack (and you even stick in the same squads when maps change! although sometimes one side can really be much better and dominate of course).

Vehicles are also included in many maps. Most require at least a second gunner to make full use of the equipment (and most have 4 passenger slots for an entire squad), and are highly entertaining to just blow up stuff with. They’re not game unbalancing either, since certain classes have the materials to stealthily or loudly blow them up, and they also can’t kill everything but do help push forwards forces into what are otherwise kill zones, or at least distract those people trying to blow you up for others to get. Helicopters are something I’ve still not learnt how to use though – the lack of a tutorial for these complex beasts is a bit annoying!

Finally, there is no singleplayer deathmatch or other nonsense. The Battlefield series never had this of course, but it is worth pointing out that the game is balanced for multiple people on a team, so you never feel alone or outnumbered and always have friends to fall back on (or get revived by!). I’m also glad there isn’t anything like capture the flag – all the modes require some form of proper tactical offence and taking over areas, not just temporary in-and-out attacks.

Epic Fail - when you suicide!

So, if I didn’t have unlocks and things to “earn” I’d be enjoying it a ton more (I can’t ignore it though, I want these “specialisations” – I keep getting killed by people with them!), however the fast paced nature with a realistic slant makes it a joy to actually play. I’ve not heard any voicechat however, which is a shame – I need to play with some friends to really use the squad combat properly and work with my squad correctly.

I’m not even in the games industry…why even try and be a committee member of the IGDA’s Quality of Life SIG? I think I can help is why!

It also might be a plus not being in the industry I’m only peripheral to at best, since I can’t really get fired for saying anything.

I’m also really happy if I can help get students more knowledgeable about the situation, and help facilitate the SIG to do great things. I’m going to be helping edit people’s own QoL stories, if anyone wants to contribute any, as well as help write or at least edit some of the white papers that the SIG will be doing. All this will hopefully grow the SIG so more rapid progress can be made, which is always awesome to see.